


Avatar: The Last Gasbender

by ManacleRend



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8356777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManacleRend/pseuds/ManacleRend





	

Water… Earth… Fire… Air… 

My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace, when the Avatar kept balance between the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. 

Only the Avatar mastered all four elements. Only he could stop the ruthless Firebenders, or so Gran Gran claimed. But, when the world needed him most, he vanished, how inconvenient. It sounds like a pretty typical myth to me about a chosen one with fantastic powers. At least I haven’t heard of any sort of prophecy of him returning to save us all.

A hundred years have passed, and the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the war, or so their propaganda tries to convince us. I have my doubts, they’ve been claiming that for decades. Two years ago, my father and the men of my tribe journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the Fire Nation, leaving me and my brother to look after our tribe. 

Everyone believes that the Avatar was never reborn into the Air Nomads and that the cycle is broken. Duh, it’s been a hundred freaking years.

Act 1

(A teenage boy and girl sit in a canoe surrounded by icebergs. They are both wearing blue parkas. The girl has two braids coming from the front of her hair and curving down around the sides of her face. The boy is completely bald around the sides of his head with his hair on top pulled back in a tiny man bun.)

Katara: Watch and learn, Sokka. This is how you catch a fish.

(Katara leans over the edge of the canoe and spots a target. Confidently, she removes her left mitten and motions with her exposed hand. Suddenly, a bubble of water containing the fish bursts out of the water.)

Katara (in a fishy voice): Give me a kiss you handsome boy!

(She levitates it, using some sort of telekinesis, towards to her brother’s face. Sokka puckers up and leans forward making kissing sounds. He gets uncomfortably close before Katara is convinced that he’s not bluffing and with a flick of her wrist the fish takes evasive action to narrowly avoid being smooched.)

Sokka: Way to be a third wheel, sis. You completely ruined our special moment. Miss Fish, don’t be shy, come back.

Katara: I can’t believe you were actually going to do it!

Sokka: You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. Grab them by the fin. You can do anything.

(The fish pokes its head up over the side of the canoe from where it was hiding.)

Sokka: Don’t play hard to get, Miss Fish. I have a big surprise for you.

(He places one of his hands behind his back while the other motions the fish forward enticingly. The anthropomorphized fish appears to become curious and cautiously levitates closer to the teen. When it gets within range he swiftly spears it with the curved blade he was concealing. He then pushes it off the blade and onto the floor of the canoe.)

Katara (in mock indignation): You’re a terrible date. At least buy Miss Fish a drink before you show her your boomerang.

Sokka: You make a good point. Find me another candidate and I’ll try and show some restraint this time.

(Both peer over the side in search of new chums. They notice a faint glowing underwater.)

Katara: Do you think it’s some sort of bioluminescent fish?

(She raises both hands in an effort to raise the object. She strains and grunts and slowly a glowing iceberg emerges from beneath the waves.)

They both gasp in awe. 

Katara: What is it? There’s something in there.

Sokka pressed his face to the ice with his hands on the side of his head attempting to block out some of the glare from the sun.

Sokka: Do you see that? I think that’s an eye and that’s a horn. There’s a Thing in the Ice. I don’t want to thaw this into some sort of Awoken Horror.

Katara: But imagine how much meat it will have. This could feed the village for a month if we can get it back there.

Sokka: If you can drag it behind us with your magical waterbending powers I’m sure we can figure out a way to thaw it. We just would want to be careful and melt it some distance from the village on the off chance that it’s some how dangerous.

Katara appreciated her brother’s intense focus on safety since their father had sailed off to war. Sokka was technically the man of village now and he took the role quite seriously.

Katara: It’s much too large to move with just my waterbending. As far as I can tell my power has some relation to my physical strength. I’ve tried for hours at a time to shift objects smaller than this and haven’t made any progress. Although…

She focused on the ice and tried to move it back and forth just a little bit. It was too large to move enough to even see the movement but she imagined that she was exciting every little bit of ice. That it was cold and sluggish, but she played the music that got the little ice people to start dancing.

The ice began to melt.

Small rivers of warm water wound their way around the lump of ice. The glow reflected through the moving water and created a lovely psychical globe of movement and colour. Sokka was both jealous of and proud of his sister’s ability to control the water. For some reason the waterbending ability wasn’t available to him even though they were related. He remembered crying as child because Katara had something that he never would. She was concentrating heavily now to bisect the ice into quarters by passing the moving water over it’s surface.

There’s someone in there.

The figure of a smallish bald boy with blue arrows tattooed on his hands and head was seated in an meditative pose on the back of the beast whose eye and horn he had seen previously.

As the ice melted, uncovering his head, both his eyes and arrows begin to glow white. The iceberg then cracks from top to bottom and explodes open. A huge shaft of white blue light shoots straight into the heavens.

***

Black smoke rises from the single smokestack of an iron hulled battleship as its spiked prow breaks through chunks of floating ice.

On the foredeck of the ship, a young man with no eye scar and a completely bald head, save for a long stylish ponytail sticking straight up out of the back, is seated at a table across from an older man with a greying beard . They are both intently studying the Pai Sho board between them. 

Zuko: Finally! Uncle, do you realize what this means?

Iroh: How can this be? 

Zuko makes a decisive move by shoving one of his tiles forward on the circular board. Iroh’s face seems to crumple. He takes a sip of his tea and looks at his nephew with defeat. Then just as Zuko’s triumph is about to erupt, Iroh slowly taps a tile from the side into a position that he had been planning for the whole game. It takes Zuko a minute to realize that he’d been defeated.

Iroh (chucking to himself): Foolish samurai warrior.

Zuko: When Father sent me on this assinine snipe hunt for a Water Tribe settlement at the bottom of the world with you along to train me, I don’t think he meant train me lose at Pai Sho. It’s a child’s game, anyway.

Iroh: Strategy in a game can become analogous to strategy in a war and in a game the stakes are low enough to play again and again. Your father thinks of war itself as a child’s game. You act too swiftly, without thinking. Our family has learnt to take its time in all things. War can take generations to slowly ensnare and choke the life out of our enemies.

Zuko: I fail to see how spending years combing every inch of this frozen wasteland is an effective use of our time.

Iroh: Time is nothing. If your great grandchildren have a slightly increased chance of winning this war every tedious moment of your life was well spent. We have always played the long game.

Zuko stands up with anger and he is about to enter the deck as a shaft of light rises from the horizon.

Zuko: Helmsman, head a course for the light!

***

Katara is still shielding both her and Sokka behind a wall of ice from the blast that just dissipated. They look up to see residual blue light still swirling around the top of what is left of the iceberg. Suddenly, the boy appears, his eyes and arrow markings still aglow.

Sokka (raising his spear at the boy): Stop!

(The boy stands up as the glow and residual energy fades. He seems to pass out and slides down the side of the ruined iceberg to Sokka and Katara, who lunges forward and catches him as he falls. Sokka pokes Aang in the head with the blunt end of his weapon.)

Katara: Stop it!

(She gently turns him over so that he is lying on his back. He begins to wake up. He slowly opens his eyes and he looks into Katara face. A breeze gently blows her braids and we hear him intake a breath.)

Aang (whispering in a weak voice): I need to ask you something.  
Katara: What?  
Aang (still whispering): Please... come closer.  
Katara: What is it?  
Aang (in a normal, even excited voice): Will you go penguin sledding with me?  
Katara: Uh... What’s that?

(Aang airbends himself to his feet as he starts to rub the back of his head.)

Sokka: Ahh!  
Aang: What's going on here?  
Sokka: You tell us! How'd you get in the ice? (Poking Aang with his spear) And why aren't you frozen?  
Aang (batting the spear away, absently): I'm not sure.

(Aang gasps as a low, animal like noise is heard and begins to frantically climb back up the ruined iceberg. He jumps over the lip of what is in fact now a crater and lands on a huge furry animal.) 

Aang: Appa! Are you all right? Wake up, buddy.

(He leans down and opens one of the beasts eyes. He closes it again. Aang hops down and tries to lift the animal's huge head, but without effect. Katara and Sokka come around the corner and their mouths drop in shock as the see the monster, whose mouth opens and licks the boy trying to wake him up.)

Aang: Haha! You're okay!

(He hugs Appa, who occupies most of the crater left by the explosion. He is a huge flying bison with six legs and horns like a steer. He gets up and shakes himself off a bit.)

Sokka: What is that thing?  
Aang: This is Appa, my flying bison.  
Sokka: How does it fly?It doesn’t have wings.

(Aang is about to reply, but doesn't as Appa begins to sneeze. Aang ducks in time as Appa proceeds to sneeze all over Sokka.)

Sokka: Ewww! Aahh!!!

(Sokka, covered in snot, tries to get rid of it by rolling around on the ice and snow.)

Aang: Don't worry. It'll wash out.  
Sokka: Ugh!  
Aang: So, do you guys live around here?  
Katara: Don’t get distracted. You didn’t explain how your bison is capable of flying.  
Aang: Oh that’s easy. He bends the air like this.

(Aang demonstrates by levitating a couple of inches off of the iceberg.)

Katara: You’re an airbender!? Holy shit. Have you been frozen in that ice for 100 years?

(Her demeanour abruptly changes.)

Katara: I have some terrible news for you…

Aang: 100 years! Cooool.

(Aang turns and notices smoke in the distance.)

Aang: Is that your village?

Sokka: Fuck. That beam of light could have been spotted by Fire Navy ship. We’d better get moving. Come with us. We have a lot to talk about.


End file.
